Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant: A Women's History

Dr. Lauren Duval joins Kathryn Gehred to discuss a letter from Elizabeth Drinker to her husband Henry dated February 26, 1778. In 1777, not long before the British Army occupied Philadelphia, the Continental Congress exiled Henry and 19 other prominent Quaker men. In this letter, Elizabeth provides Henry with an update on life in occupied Philadelphia and the Scottish officer who has recently taken up quarters in the Drinker home.  Lauren Duval is an assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and a Gibson Fellow in Democracy at the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the New York Public Library, the David Library of the American Revolution, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Dr. Duval earned her PhD from American University in Washington, DC. Duval's book, The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence [https://uncpress.org/book/9781469690056/the-home-front/] (Dec 2025), narrates the American Revolution and its aftermath from the vantage points of households in British-occupied cities    Find the official transcript here [https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/episode-60-those-guardians-of-liberty].  Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.  Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker to Henry Drinker, 26 February 1778, Harverfod College Quaker & Special Collections, https://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/resources/hcmc-854 [https://archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/resources/hcmc-854].

Diane Ehrenpreis joins Kathryn Gehred to discuss a letter from Martha Jefferson to a Mrs. Madison dated August 8, 1780 in which Jefferson encourages women to join together and raise funds to support the Continental soldiers. This letter is one of only four known correspondences in Jefferson’s hand. In this episode, Diane and Katy discuss some of the ways Jefferson’s words have been misinterpreted in the past.  Diane Ehrenpreis is the Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. She has worked in the Curatorial Department at Monticello for twenty-three years, researching and building the collection. In her capacity as a curator, she supervised a complete study and reinstallation of Monticello’s second and third floor rooms, as well as Jefferson’s Private Suite. Currently, she is overseeing plans to reinstall the Dining and Tea Rooms to better interpret Thomas Jefferson’s aesthetic and didactic intent. Forthcoming work includes an article co-authored with scholar Nicole Brown on Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson's role as an activist living in Revolutionary Virginia, one that was initially suppressed by her partner and fellow revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson. She holds an M.A. in Art History from Boston University and B.A. in Art History from University of Illinois at Chicago. Find the official transcript here [https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/episodes/episode-59-the-scheme-i-undertake-with-chearfulness].  Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.  “Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson to Eleanor Conway Madison, 8 August 1780,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-03-02-0615 [https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-03-02-0615]. Esher Reed, “The Sentiments of an American Woman,” 1780, Virginia Humanities, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/the-sentiments-of-an-american-woman-1780/ [https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/the-sentiments-of-an-american-woman-1780/]. “George Washington to Esther De Berdt Reed, 14 July 1780,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-27-02-0093 [https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-27-02-0093].

Dr. Emily Sneff joins Kathryn Gehred to discuss a letter from Polly Palmer to John Adams dated 4 August 1776, in which Palmer thanks Adams for sending her one of the earliest printings of the Declaration of Independence. In this episode, Gehred and Sneff explore Palmer and Adams’s lifelong friendship, their experience getting inoculated for smallpox together, and military movements during the War for Independence. Dr. Emily Sneff is a historian and leading expert on the United States Declaration of Independence. She is a consulting curator for exhibitions planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration in 2026 at the Museum of the American Revolution, the American Philosophical Society, and Historic Trappe. She is also the curator of digital content for Declaration Stories. Her forthcoming book explores the dissemination of the Declaration around the Atlantic in the summer and fall of 1776.   Find the official transcript here [https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/Episode-58-our-unnatural-enemies-may-be-turned-from-us].  Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.    “Mary Palmer to John Adams, 15 June 1776,” Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 2, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0007 [https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0007]. “John Adams to Mary Palmer, 5 July 1776,” Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 2, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0018 [https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0018].  “Mary Palmer to John Adams, 4 August 1776,” Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 2, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0047 [https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-04-02-02-0047]. “To John Adams from Mary Palmer, 25 November 1789,” Papers of John Adams, Volume 20, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-20-02-0121 [https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-20-02-0121].

Dr. Cynthia Kierner joins host Kathryn Gehred to discuss a 1778 letter from Richard Henry Lee to his sister Hannah Lee Corbin. In a lost letter, Hannah previously expressed her frustrations that widows are being taxed without representation. In this response, Richard explains the cultural and legal barriers that prevent Hannah and other widows from voting.   Dr. Cynthia Kierner is a professor of history at George Mason University. She is a a specialist in the fields of early America, women and gender, and early southern history. She is the author of many books and articles including The Tory's Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America, Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood, and Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times.    Find the official transcript here [https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/episode-57-those-tumultuous-assemblies-of-men].  Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.  The Archives of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, Papers of the Lee Family, Box 2, M2009.057, Jessie Ball duPont Library, Stratford Hall, https://leefamilyarchive.org/richard-henry-lee-to-hannah-lee-corbin-1778-march-18/ [https://leefamilyarchive.org/richard-henry-lee-to-hannah-lee-corbin-1778-march-18/].

Dr. Jacqueline Beatty joins host Kathryn Gehred to discuss The Petition of Belinda from 1783 in which Belinda Sutton petitions The Massachusetts General Court for the funds left to her by her enslaver Isaac Royall after he fled the colonies during the Revolutionary War. Beatty and Gehred discuss Sutton’s use of poetic language to describe her kidnapping and enslavement.   Dr. Jacqueline Beatty is an Associate Professor of History at York College of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in Early American, Women’s and Gender, and Public History. Her book, In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America [https://nyupress.org/9781479812127/in-dependence/] explores the ways in which women in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston manipulated their legal, social, and economic positions of dependence and turned these constraints into vehicles of female empowerment.   Find the official transcript here [https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/episode-56-the-most-dreadful-of-all-enemies].   Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.   Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, 2015, "Massachusetts Archives Collection. v.239-Revolution Resolves, 1783. SC1/series 45X, Petition of Belinda", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0GMCO [https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0GMCO], Harvard Dataverse, V4.  The Royall House and Slave Quarters - https://royallhouse.org/ [https://royallhouse.org/]